Obama Favors Increased Employee Rights

On this Labor Day in the United States, neither blue nor white collar workers have much to celebrate. And Obama’s attempt to update labor laws was also unsuccessful.

This 127th Labor Day holiday in the U.S. was no day of joy for employees. At a planned union picnic in Ohio where President Obama was scheduled to give an address on the U.S. labor market, the fact did not go unnoticed that the current recession, according to official figures from July, had wiped out some 6.7 million jobs nationwide. Despite signs of a recovery, an additional 216,000 jobs disappeared during the month of August. Obama’s great promise of reform, namely the passing of a new labor union law, receded even further into the distance.

Several U.S. foundations, among them Ford and Russell Sage, reported that American workers’ rights are in their worst shape in three decades. According to the foundations, employers regularly cheat low-wage earners out of earned overtime pay. About one-third of them do not even earn the legally mandated minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Of the approximately 4,400 workers in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago who were interviewed, 68 percent claimed that in the previous week they had been paid less than they were entitled to. American labor unions claim that this is the result of a systematic erosion of workers’ rights that took place under George W. Bush’s administration.

The freedom to organize fares no better in U.S. companies. That which conservative American political figures are so quick to criticize in foreign governments and regimes is business as usual in the United States: workers are illegally fired, freedom of opinion and the right to assemble are trampled upon and internal union elections are manipulated.

According to recent studies by the labor union-oriented organization “American Rights at Work,” a worker is fired every 23 minutes in the United States because of labor organizing activities. Thirty percent of employers forbid workers from trying to unionize and whenever the threat of organization looms, nine out of ten managers force their employees to participate in face-to-face meetings with management where they are lectured in unmistakable terms about their actions.

President Obama, who had championed workers’ rights even when he was still a senator, announced his desire to strengthen labor’s social position and to ensure easier access to companies for unions. In April, he supported a congressional initiative, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) that would grant employees the right to organize. He had already gotten the EFCA through the House of Representatives by 2007, but it fell a few votes short of passage by the Senate.

While Democrats currently control both houses of Congress, prospects for the FECA do not appear at all promising. A number of conservative Democratic senators are not inclined to support Obama. The Republican Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, announced at the end of August that no Republican would ever vote for it because American workers would rather see no labor unions at all since “we have very enlightened management in this country now.”

A powerful business lobby alliance, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and leading corporations, had announced even before Obama’s inauguration that they would try everything possible to ensure the EFCA’s defeat.

Employers, including foreign firms operating in the United States, therefore vehemently oppose the measure because reform would primarily raise their production costs. Since there are no industry-wide wage agreements in the United States and each company acts individually, labor unions are at a disadvantage compared to their non-union competition. Independent studies show that unionized workers in the United States earn an average 27 percent more than their non-organized counterparts, as well as enjoying health insurance benefits nearly twice as generous. Women, according to the studies, earn up to $179 more per week and African-Americans up to $180 more. The unions themselves claim their members earn from 25 to 40 percent more.

Due to disadvantageous legal conditions encountered in trying to unionize, the number of unionized laborers has been constantly dwindling in the United States. Only 7.5 percent of workers in private industry and 35.9 percent of public employees are union members. That adds up to just 12.4 percent of all workers – about 16 million union members – as compared to 20 percent in 1983. Surveys indicate that around 60 million workers would join a labor union if they had the opportunity to do so.

Obama’s team, including Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden, are serious about wanting to strengthen workers’ rights. The advantages enjoyed by the “right to work” companies will not be countered unless and until the workforce has the opportunity to organize nationwide. The EFCA on which Congress is scheduled to vote in October is, along with health care reform, one of the most important (as well as controversial) pieces of legislation put forth by the Obama administration.